04: The Dark Angel
by Silent Elegy
Summary: Sometimes hero, sometimes villain, Ebony Angel is always the best money can buy. She has never failed at a job before, and she's just been hired to kill Jack Fenton...
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: Danny Phantom and all related characters are the product of Butch Hartman and Nickelodeon studios. Ebony Angel, Sweetheart, and Kat/Electra are the product Silent Elegy.

* * *

It was supposed to have been a charity event; that's what it was billed as, at least. Everyone who was anyone was there, and quite a few people who were simply trying to be someone. It was the ritziest black-tie affair since the first Oscar award ceremony. 

It was also being run by the head of the local mafia.

Everyone knew who he was, but no one could convict him of anything. And in this town, you were innocent until proven impoverished. Considering what he actually had planned for tonight, that wasn't going to happen any time in the near future.

The liquor had been freely flowing for just long enough to put everyone off guard, but not quite long enough to give anyone a hero complex. At an invisible signal from their boss, they struck. Thirty armed men smashed through windows and doors, guns drawn and demanding money, jewelry, everything of value. The people were rich and drunk, but they weren't stupid. They happily gave everything of value if it meant saving their own skin.

Fifteen minutes into the collection, a rumbling noise intruded on the frightened din. Several of the thieves paled visibly and began nudging one another. There was the squeal of tires on asphalt followed by the screams of terrified women as something black and fast crashed through one of the few still-intact windows. Everyone scrambled to get out of the way as the solid black motorcycle slammed into the middle of the floor and skidded to a stop.

The rider, like the bike, was dressed in solid black, a bulletproof material that mimicked the look of leather. No one could see the person's face under the black helmet, but they didn't need to know who it was.

"Don't just stand there, you idiots!" yelled one of the thugs. "Get her!"

"She" raised a black gloved hand to make a mocking come-hither gesture. Eight of the thugs obliged. Guns held before them, they advanced on her in a loose circle. Beneath her helmet, she smiled; that was just the way she liked it. She revved the motor and shot forward slightly, then slammed on the brakes just in time to send the first thug flying without leaving any permanent damage.

She shot forward again, just missing a few civilians, and whipped the bike around to charge forward. In a move that would have made most professional stunt riders green with envy, she skidded in a tight circle that knocked the remaining seven armed men to the floor.

Some of these men had faced her before. The intelligent ones ran at that point. Those that stayed quickly wished they hadn't as the biker made quick work of them and squealed to a final halt before their boss. The entire procedure was done in complete silence from the rider; she let her bike speak for her. Now, as she stared at the man who ordered the theft, she revved the engine menacingly and pointed at the very large ruby ring he wore.

He looked down slightly, realized what she was demanding, and clapped his hand over it. "I'm not giving you this!" he snapped.

She revved the engine again and curled her finger toward herself, then opened her palm. The man took a step back, then turned and ran. He made it about three steps before he was knocked to the floor. For the first time in the last thirty minutes, the rider got off the idling bike to walk around and remove the ring herself. Then she mounted again and, with an ironic salute, drove back the way she came.

Away from the lights and people at last, she laughed loud and long at the fools who thought they could beat her. She was the unstoppable force scientists were always debating about. No one could touch her. She slowed to turn into a small alley and shut off the bike.

"Ebony Angel, I presume?"

Angel whirled to face the speaker; all she could see was a vague human outline in the shadows. "Who are you?" she demanded.

"I am simply a gentleman with a lucrative offer for you." He displayed a single hundred dollar bill, which Angel snatched.

"I'm listening." He handed her a photograph of a large, middle-aged man in orange spandex.

"This is your target. His name is Jack Fenton. I want him killed, but not his wife. I trust you won't have any problems with this request."

"Why would I?" she scoffed. The mysterious shadow handed over a second photograph, this one of a white-haired boy in a black costume with white gloves, boots, and belt and some kind of symbol over the chest. She raised an eyebrow and grinned beneath her helmet. "Well, I like his fashion sense."

"His name is Danny Phantom, and he will try to stop you. There will be a bonus if you manage to kill him as well."

Angel pocketed the photo and regarded her would-be employer for a few seconds. "Phantom, huh? He thinks he's a superhero or something?"

The man laughed. "Something like that, yes. You'll need special weapons to deal with him. I have already arranged everything you'll need." He gestured at a nearby crate; when Angel looked back, he was holding an open wallet. "Name your price." She named an outrageous figure on impulse, but the man merely nodded acceptingly and handing her half of it. "The other half when you deliver," he explained needlessly.

"Of course," she responded. "Just tell me where."

* * *

A/N: Gee, I wonder who that could be? A little background on Angel. I created her a few years ago to be the main character in a game I intend to make one day. She was created to be a super...eh...person. Not really a hero, as you can see. Her archnemisis, who won't be named in this, is El Diablo Roho, the mafia guy she just robbed. I was going to do a different story next, but I need a little more time to make it work. Consequently, you get this one, when it was originally not going to be for a few more stories. Hence Vlad's presence. My apologies. 


	2. Chapter One

A shrill scream echoed through the empty streets of Amity Park. A creature best described as an old crone with hands like claws, ratty grey hair, and wrinkled yellowing skin was the source of the glass-shattering noise. The two humans that had arrived to stop this menace cried out in agony and clapped their hands over their ears, for all the good it did. The sound reverberated through their skulls and might have killed them if the ghost boy formerly known as Inviso-Bill hadn't slammed into it from behind and sent it crashing to the ground.

"You guys all right?" he called to the two humans.

Jack Fenton shook his head to clear it and yelled loudly, "What?"

His wife Maddie rolled her eyes and fired her Ghost Bazooka at the banshee as it started to recover. It screamed one last time as it was pulled into the small, temporary ghost portal, and Maddie smirked before turning her attention to her other ghostly enemy. "Now, what are you doing here?" she demanded, aiming the bazooka at his head.

Danny Phantom held up his hands, much as a criminal would when cornered by the police, and said quickly, "I had nothing do with it!" His panicked tone and expression practically screamed "guilty fourteen-year-old."

Jack looked around helplessly and yelled again, "What?"

Maddie rolled her eyes again and mimed her husband to be quiet. Danny took the opportunity awarded by her distraction to become invisible and fly away. Her angry shouts followed him for a while, until he got out of earshot. He sighed sadly; he loved his parents dearly, but there were times…

Then he remembered that, as his parents, they wouldn't keep trying to send him to the Ghost Zone if he would just tell them he was their son. So really, it was his own fault they were now driving way past the speed limit in pursuit. They still couldn't see him, but the Fenton Family Ghost Assault Vehicle was equipped with Fenton Ghost Radar. They didn't need to see him to track him.

"Attention, ghost!" Maddie yelled over a loudspeaker. "Give up now, and we won't use you for an experiment when we catch you!"

"Oh, now that's incentive," Danny muttered. He flew a little higher to scan the side streets for any place he could lose them. It occurred to him to just fly higher, but without knowing exactly how good their radar was, he couldn't know when he was high enough. Besides, they would just pick up his signal again when he came back down. He did have one advantage, at least. Above all the buildings, he could fly in a straight line while his parents had to concede to the turns of the road. Unfortunately, the Fenton RV was considerably faster than he was, and his dad was just shy of being a reckless driver.

He heard a noise and turned just in time to dive below a blast of some kind. Apparently, Jack and Maddie had fixed the auto-targeting at some point, which meant that they didn't need to see Danny to attack him. He dodged another blast and was forced to go intangible to avoid flying headlong into a building.

Suddenly, he stopped and slapped his face in annoyance. His parents couldn't exactly drive through a building, now could they? He glanced around to see that it was an office of some kind. The employees bustled about their business, completely oblivious to the invisible intruder in their midst. He floated over to a window and looked down to see the RV slide to a stop in front of, and very close to being inside, the building. He waited until Jack and Maddie came charging out of the elevator, waving their weapons and shouting about ghosts, before he flung himself through the window and back into the open air.

He gave a relieved sigh at having finally lost them. If it had come down to actually fighting them, he never would have won. They were his parents; he wasn't going to hurt them, no matter what they tried to do to him.

* * *

Ebony Angel lowered her binoculars and slid the visor of her helmet back down. She prided herself on her anonymity; beneath that all-concealing outfit, she could have been anyone. It was powerful feeling, and an addictive one. 

She chuckled slightly and patted the seat of her bike. The rumbling of its motor made her think of a panther, impatient to begin the hunt. "Soon, Sweetheart," she crooned. "Half the joy of the hunt is in the stalking, after all. The chase will begin soon enough, and then we'll see if this Phantom is as worthy of our time as 'he' said."

* * *

Danny crept out of his bedroom and looked around. No sign of his sister; so far, so good. He quietly descending the stairs, straining his ears for the sound of pages turning; still nothing. He knew his parents weren't home yet, but where was Jazz? Not that he particularly wanted her freaking out over the gash on his upper arm, but the fight with the banshee had put him on edge. He shook off his undoubtedly baseless concern and went into the bathroom to find the first aid kit. 

Any wounds he sustained in ghost mode usually healed, at least superficially, whenever he changed back into a human. This one, however, was bad enough that it stuck around. At least, it wasn't as bad as it had been when the banshee gave it to him. He had just finished cleaning it and was in the process of finding a Band-Aid large enough to cover it when the front door banged opened.

"I can't believe we lost him!" Jack yelled. Danny snickered quietly. He heard his mother reply but couldn't make out what she said through the closed bathroom door. "Danny! Jazz! Are you home?"

"Just a minute!" Danny yelled back. He gave up trying to find a Band-Aid and decided to simply cover it with gauze and medical tape and pray no one would notice.

He found his parents in the kitchen already watching the news even though any reports that might be aired about the ghost attack wouldn't be on until later. He sat down across from his dad at the table while his mother started work on dinner. It really was amazing to him sometimes that this family could possibly be so normal. If someone didn't know what Jack and Maddie did for a living and decided to ignore the brightly colored hazmat suits, they might have mistaken the Fentons for a standard nuclear family.

"Have you seen Jazz, son?" Jack asked, perhaps a little too casually. Perhaps the banshee had instilled pointless worry in him, as well.

Danny shrugged and managed to cover a wince as the movement reawakened the pain in his arm. "I've been out with Sam and Tucker," he lied. "She was gone when I got back." Although, maybe it technically wasn't a lie. He had been hanging out with his two best friends earlier. They had simply already parted ways for the day when the banshee had attacked.

To be honest, Danny was very glad his parents had arrived when they did. He was relatively certain he could have handled it alone, but not while trying to protect all the morons who were standing around watching. That was how he had gotten injured. Then the Fentons had arrived and managed to clear the streets while Danny distracted the ghost. Now, if they would just accept that he was only trying to help, his life would be so much easier.

"Sweetie, what happened to your arm?" Maddie's voice interrupted his inner monologue.

"Huh?" He blinked as he returned to the present to realize that he had been absentmindedly rubbing his arm above the injury. He quickly tugged his sleeve back down over the makeshift bandage. "Oh…um…I was…I just…walked into something…" he stammered. "You know, at the mall. Heh, clumsy me." He grinned nervously, but his mother seemed to accept the excuse. He sat through a lecture on being more careful and just barely managed to convince her that he was fine and she really didn't need to look at it because it was just a scrape really. The ectoplasm intermingled with his blood was considerably less noticeable when he was human, but it would still be hard to miss if someone got that close.

Jazz walked through the front door then, and Danny was able to slip away while she tried to explain that she had been at the library. He closed his bedroom door on a lecture about letting someone know where she was at all times and flopped onto his bed to stare at the ceiling.

And what a fascinating ceiling it was, at that. It was white. There were all those little…bits speckled all over. They had a name, but he could never remember it. Whatever they were, they were pretty pointless except as entertainment to a very bored fourteen-year-old. It was like looking for patterns in cloud formations. There was a certain area close to the wall that he swore looked like Clinton.

Wow, he was bored.

He thought about calling Sam, but her parents had initiated a new rule of no phone calls after six o'clock. It would only last until her grandmother managed to convince them that they were being stupid, but that didn't help tonight. The next logical choice was Tucker, but Danny wasn't in the mood to gripe about the delay on the new version of Doomed.

He checked to make sure he wasn't bleeding through the bandage, then went back downstairs. The conversation in progress was, predictably enough, about ghosts. Specifically, one ghost in particular.

"I'm just saying," Jazz was saying. "Maybe you guys should think about what motivates him. Why is he so interested in driving all the other ghosts out of Amity Park?"

"He's a ghost," Jack pointed out. "Who knows why they do what they do?"

"Well, he must have a reason."

"Ghosts are very territorial," Maddie said. "He probably just considers this to be his territory."

Danny dropped his head onto his right fist, flinched, and switched to his left. He shook his head in answer to Jazz's curious look and let his eyes flash green. She nodded understanding and went back to trying to apply logic to the enigma that was Danny Phantom.

"Well, that can't be all there is," she argued. "I mean, he was concerned for your welfare, right?"

"It was probably a trick," Jack announced.

"But that implies that he's not as simple as you guys already tried to say he was. Either he's complicated, or he's not. You can't have it both ways."

Jack grumbled for a few moments, then asked, "What do you think, Danny?"

Danny tensed and got that panicked look that he got whenever he was addressed on the subject of his alter ego. "Uh…I don't know…?"

The conversation was interrupted then by an electronic voice that said, "I don't know. Fear me."

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Jazz exclaimed. She snatched the Ghost Gabber from where Jack had set it after a few futile attempts to "repair" it, and shut it off. "Honestly, I don't know why you keep trying to fix this thing. It serves no purpose whatsoever."

Danny looked up slightly from where he had buried his head in his arm, but Jazz seemed to have successfully diffused the potential disaster. He gave her a look of pure gratitude; she returned with one half amused and half chiding. He knew she was trying to say that he should just tell his parents and get it over with, and he would.

One day.

* * *

A/N: Yeah, I know I usually write these specifically from Danny's point of view, but I realized this one wouldn't work as well if I did that. So in order to keep the action from sounding contrived and random, you'll be getting the story from whoever's point of view will best tell the story. 


	3. Chapter Two

"You know, I'm actually surprised she waited as long as she did," Danny mentioned idly. He was, of course, talking to his two best friends since Kindergarten, Sam and Tucker. The three of them were sitting at the food court of the mall discussing the events of the day before. Namely, Jazz's reaction to his injury.

"So she really freaked out, huh?" Tucker asked.

That would have been putting it mildly. The second their parents had gone to bed, Jazz had barged into his room, demanding to know exactly what had happened. She had then insisted on checking the wound herself and redressing it, despite the adequate job Danny had done. The fight hadn't been any worse than any other he'd ever been in. If he hadn't had to worry about protecting the spectators, he never would have been injured so badly in the first place. That guy with the camera just didn't know when to run. Maybe he thought it was a publicity stunt or something.

Danny shook his head and sighed. "I don't get it. She laughs at me when the Ghost Gabber tries to translate what I'm saying, which is just totally pointless. Then she goes completely nuts because of a little scrape."

"Um, Danny?" Sam cut in. "If it didn't heal when you went human, it was probably a little worse than 'a little scrape'."

"Yeah, yeah. The point is she's worrying over nothing." He stabbed his sundae with his spoon and winced as the movement jarred his injury.

Tucker and Sam exchanged a knowing look. "Nothing, huh?" the goth girl asked innocently. Danny shot her a withering glare.

Tucker spared a moment to snicker quietly, earning the same look from his friend, before he said, "You know, if it's not healed yet, maybe you should have it looked at."

"Tuck, my blood has ectoplasm in it. I don't think showing that to a doctor would be a very good i-" He broke off suddenly as a chill passed through him that turned his breath into a visible fog. "Oh, come on…" he moaned.

"Can I have your ice cream?" Tucker asked, ever the opportunist. The disgruntled ghost boy slid it to him without even bothering to look and dashed off to find a nice, unobserved hiding place.

In ghost mode once again, Danny flew toward to the source of the screaming to find a painfully familiar enemy. "You, again?" he demanded. "Didn't Mom send you back to the Ghost Zone?"

The banshee rushed forward to rake him with her talon-like fingernails. He waited until it was practically on top of him, then grabbed the creature by the wrists and threw it into a wall. It screamed its rage, and Danny cried out as the ear piercing sound split through his head. Fortunately, as a ghost who apparently had a little banshee in him, he had a certain resistance to the attack. Also fortunately, teenagers had more sense than adults when it came to saving their own skin and had already fled. Squinting against the dancing lights the pain in his head had caused, he raised his arm and fired an ectoplasmic energy blast in the general area he thought the banshee must be. He must have been right; the sound cut off abruptly to leave his ears ringing. He blasted the ghost a second time and sent it flying into the parking lot.

* * *

A solid black motorcycle cruised slowly to a stop on a hill with a decent view of the parking lot. The rider killed the engine and lifted the visor of her helmet, the better to see through her binoculars. That "Danny Phantom" kid was fighting the weird old hag from the day before. How a kid could have that much power was beyond her, not that it mattered. 

That thing had come out of Fentonworks. Angel didn't know what it was exactly, or how it had gotten inside the Fenton household to begin with. Her reconnaissance from the day before had led her to the conclusion that the Fentons were enemies with this creature. She wasn't here to wonder, but she was curious by nature.

Her mysterious employer had tried to tell her Phantom was a ghost. She didn't believe in ghosts, but she wasn't stupid either. He was definitely not natural, and neither was the thing he was fighting. Whether they were actually paranormal remained to be seen. It was definitely a good light show, though. Definitely would have competed with the Pink Floyd laser show she snuck into once.

Pink Floyd. Now there was a band. You couldn't get music like that anymore, what with those whiny, grunge-whining wannabes that-

Oh, yeah. She was supposed to be watching the fight.

* * *

Danny blasted the banshee into a car and wished he had remembered to bring the Fenton Thermos. This fight was not going well. It wasn't that the ghost was too strong; it was just that he couldn't end the fight. The thing kept coming back, no matter how many times he beat it. It was infuriating. 

A few news vans had pulled up. They were smart enough to maintain a considerable distance, but they were still in danger. Danny ducked as the banshee tried to blast him with something that looked like green ecto-lightning and charged forward for a well-placed punch in its stomach. It howled, a bone-chilling sound, and lunged at Danny with much gnashing of teeth. He defended himself more or less well, but it was like trying to defend against a tornado. By the time he fought free, he was bleeding from a dozen different places and hoping vaguely that the cameras didn't catch the flecks of red mingled with the green.

The Live Breaking News van arrived at last; someone would be fired for that later. Danny didn't pay much attention because he was too busy trying to spar with a Tasmanian Devil. The banshee screamed briefly, apparently nothing more than a battle cry, and used its ecto-lightning again. Danny, who had cringed at the noise, was unable to dodge quickly enough. The blast caught him in the chest and flung him across the asphalt parking lot like a skipping stone. He finally came to a painful halt against the side of a news van and gasped when an attempt to move his injured arm revealed that the gash had reopened. The pain had been dulled by his ghost form, but not anymore. Now, it was every bit as painful as it had been when he first got it.

So much for it healing quickly. He forcibly shoved the pain aside and threw himself at the banshee, both fists in front of him. It ducked, but left itself open to a kick that knocked it several feet. Before it could recover fully, Danny body slammed it and shoved it back to a safer distance from the reporters.

* * *

Jack Fenton sat at the kitchen table with a screwdriver in one hand and the Ghost Gabber in the other. He was determined to make the thing work properly; it had become personal. Having checked and rechecked its programming, he had come to the conclusion that the problem had to be hardware related. Unfortunately, that all seemed to be in working order as well. 

"Jack, honey," Maddie said lovingly. "You've been working on that thing for days. Just let it go."

Jack grumbled something incoherent and replied, "I can't. There's absolutely no reason for the Ghost Gabber to keep malfunctioning. It should be in perfect working order. I don't know why it keeps trying to translate Danny." He grinned and added, "Unless Danny suddenly became a ghost."

The two adults shared a laugh until Maddie broke off with a thoughtful look. Fortunately for their son's secret, a news broadcast interrupted the background noise of the TV, and such frivolous thoughts as the state of Danny's humanity were driven away.

"Are...are we on?" the anchorman asked someone behind the camera. "The light's not on. No, the light's not-" He broke off suddenly and grinned into the camera. "We interrupt your regularly scheduled broadcast for this breaking news bulletin. Ghost attack at the local mall. We go now live to the scene. Courtney?"

That was all the Fentons needed to hear. As if by magic, they were in the Fenton RV and driving at least two hundred miles an hour through the residential area. How Jack Fenton could avoid being stopped by the police for driving with the intent to kill was destined to remain a mystery. Perhaps they all knew him and where he was going. Perhaps he was just one of those people who don't get pulled over. More likely, they simply lost him somewhere in all the twists and turns he managed to make without crashing the RV.

Whatever the reason, they made it to the mall in record time and spared the tiniest moment to gripe about the return of the banshee before jumping out to deal with the problem. Or problems, if one cared to count the ghost boy.

* * *

Angel watched the fight with great interest. Phantom definitely had superpowers or something; he clearly had no weapons, but he was shooting some kind of beam at the creature. Movement in the corner of her vision drew her attention to the steel-plated Fenton RV as it came careening into the parking lot. She smirked and lowered her arm. 

"All right, Sweetheart," she said as she dismounted to begin pacing. "We are to target the man, but the woman is not to be hurt. We'll have to separate them. Shouldn't be hard; people are like sheep. He's not going to be a problem, but the boy is. Still, he's nothing we can't handle."

She stopped next to the bike to check the progress of the fight. Phantom seemed to have fled, the creature was gone, and the Fentons were posing for a photo op. After a moment's thought, she stowed the binoculars in Sweetheart's saddlebags and remounted. "Let the games begin!" she yelled joyously.

* * *

A/N: Oh, yeah. The bike's name is actually Sweetheart. That's not just a term of endearment. Also, just so no one tries to ream me out for letting the character get distracted in the middle of something important, Angel's Pink Floyd tangent was to demonstrate how completely unmoved she is by what's happening. And finally. I know what the defenition of a Mary Sue is, but I've never had experience with OCs who weren't. So I can't tell if Angel and Kat fit into that category or not. I know I'm trying very hard to keep them from being Sues, but I don't know how well I'm succeeding. If someone could point out areas of improvement and what-not, I would be most grateful. 


	4. Chapter Three

Jack pursed his lips in grumpiness and huffed. Next to him, Maddie was trying to politely answer questions, but he knew they were thinking the same thing. While it was definitely nice to get the recognition they deserved, the ghost boy was getting away. Impatient, he glanced around and idly noted a black motorcycle speeding in their direction.

Speeding…toward them…

With a wordless shout, Jack grabbed Maddie and jumped forward. Although he didn't realize it, he need not have bothered. The bike sped inches away from they had been standing, just close enough to make him think he was about to be run over.

Angel swerved to a stop a few dozen feet away to let the sheep sort themselves out. When picking one animal from the herd, it was necessary to let them calm down slightly. A good sheep dog never tried to separate the one he needed while the lot of them were milling around in confusion. The good thing about humans was that they stopped milling around sooner than sheep.

The bystanders ran for their vans; some wise guy tried to get to a phone. Jack and Maddie stood to face their attacker, side by side. Angel smiled and charged forward again, right between them. Naturally, they jumped apart. Perfect.

* * *

Danny landed in the empty food court and transformed back into a human. The gauze from his bandage was still place, which kept him from bleeding on his shirt. The pain wasn't as bad anymore, either. He looked around for Sam and Tucker and started walking back towards the entrance; maybe they had gone to watch the fight?

He had barely stepped around the corner when two voices yelled his name. "Your dad!" Sam burst out.

"Someone's trying to run him over!" Tucker finished.

Without even bothering to check if anyone was watching, Danny went back into ghost mode and raced outside. He saw his dad jump out of the way as the bike went past and circled around. As it lined up for another charge, Danny shot an energy blast at the front wheel. The bike flipped forward and the driver went flying.

Jack whirled to face him and yelled, "You! What are you still doing here?"

"Saving your butt!" Danny yelled back.

"Jack!" Maddie shouted. "Just forget him and get in the van." No one actually saw what happened, but she suddenly found her arms bound to her sides by a glowing red energy. Angel stood and aimed the weapon at Danny.

"_No_ _one_…" she said in a low voice. "…scratches my Sweetheart." Danny shot skyward as she fired the plasma gun and went invisible. As though she could still see him, and perhaps she could, she continued to fire directly at him, forcing him to be on the defensive.

Jack stood in indecision. On the one hand, she was attacking the ghost boy. On the other…

Oh, who was he kidding?

While Angel was preoccupied with avenging her bike, he charged forward and knocked her to the ground. "Nobody attacks my wife!" he informed her angrily. She swung her legs around to kick Jack's out from under him, then scrambled to her feet and pointed the pistol at his head.

Danny charged forward this time and kicked the gun out of Angel's hand. She stepped back as he aimed a punch at her head, then turned and ran for the bike. The ghost boy turned slightly to see his father get to his feet. "Are you alright?"

The words "Why do you even care?" died on his lips as an engine revved. "Well, I was," he said instead. Rather than attack the biker this time, Danny grabbed his dad and made both of them intangible so that the bike went right through.

"I think we better get out of here," Danny said as he lifted Jack off the ground.

"But Maddie…!" Jack protested.

Kill Jack, try to kill Danny, don't hurt Maddie…It could only be Vlad. "I don't think 'Harley' down there is after her," he assured his dad.

Angel charged by beneath them and spun almost on a dime. With one hand on the handlebars, she lifted her plasma gun and fired. Evading with any finesse whatsoever was rendered next to impossible by Jack's presence; Danny dropped toward the ground then, in a burst of genius, dropped through it. He rolled his eyes at his dad's screams. "We're safe, now," he said loudly.

Jack broke off and slowly removed his hands from his eyes. They were in the underground parking garage directly beneath the mall. He heaved a sigh of relief then fought free. Danny was more than happy to drop him; the weight was pulling on his arm and making it start to bleed again. Jack turned to face the boy and crossed his arms. "Now, why are you helping me?" he demanded.

Danny resisted the desire to roll his eyes again. "Because you needed it."

They stared (or in Jack's case, glared) at each other for a few moments. After a bit, the ghost hunter said, "Fine! But I'm not calling you Danny. That's my son's name."

"I prefer Phantom anyway," the ghost boy said dismissively. "Now, you just stay down here, and I'll go take care of that crazy biker chick."

"Oh, no!" Jack stopped him. "That weirdo attacked my wife! If anyone's taking care of her, it's going to be me!"

Danny scoffed. "Okay. You're a human with no weapons. What could you, on your own two legs, possibly do against an armed biker and her motorcycle?"

Jack opened his mouth and was forced to close it again as no answer was forthcoming. He was spared from having to agree by a sudden growling that echoed most menacingly.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Danny exclaimed. He flew over his father's head and rushed forward to meet their adversary as she came into view on the ramp. "Who the heck are you, anyway?" he yelled while swinging his fist.

Angel shifted her weight to slide nearly flat against the ground beneath Danny. One thing she had never figured out how to do was right the bike after a move like that. Instead, she pulled herself out from under it and jumped to her feet. "They call me Angel," she sneered. "Ebony Angel."

"I thought angels were supposed nice and sweet," Danny said as they traded blows.

Angel swung, ducked under the counter, and rolled forward to reach Sweetheart. "I said 'ebony'," she reiterated. "Not 'ivory'." She had never been one for idle banter, much preferring a fear-inducing silence. For some reason, it always unnerved people to be faced by an attacker who never spoke. And yet, she found she was enjoying trading banter with the ghost boy. Maybe there was something to those witticisms superheroes were always shouting after all. Her reverie was cut short as she was tackled to ground by an orange blur.

"For Maddie!" Jack shouted, a decent battle cry, all things considered. He started punching the visor of Angel's helmet, trying to break it.

Angel's visor was bulletproof, like all the rest of her outfit. She fought thugs with guns for living; anything else would have asking to be killed. But it was thin out of necessity. If it had been as thick as normal bulletproof glass, she wouldn't have been able to raise it like she needed to do on occasion. It was designed more to stop a lucky shot than to actually protect her. Repeated blows would shatter it, and Jack had just cracked it.

Angel balled her hand into a fist and hit Jack where it really hurt. She managed to pull herself out from under him while he was otherwise occupied, and kicked him in the head.

"Leave him alone!" Danny yelled. He shot forward to slam his fist into Angel's helmet and succeeded in finishing the job his father had begun. He had just enough time to see a pair of shadowy, black eyes before the gash on his arm exploded into agony. He dropped to the ground and just barely managed to stay in ghost form. He waited for a while for the blow that was sure to come until he heard Sweetheart's engine rev.

"You'll pay for that one, Danny Phantom!" Angel yelled. "For that one and for Sweetheart!"

Danny looked after her as she fled the scene, one hand clasped to something that had been shoved into his arm. He gritted his teeth and turned to see how his dad was doing. "Seems like…ow…like I'm asking this a lot, lately," he tried to make light of the situation. "But are you okay?" Jack nodded mutely, an obvious lie, but Danny accepted it since he couldn't exactly help. Instead, he grabbed the handle of what had to be a knife and started to pull; his sight suddenly went dim, and he decided to leave it favor of not passing out and changing back in front of his father.

After several tense moments of fighting off his transformation rings, he heard the scuffling noise of Jack pulling himself to his feet. Danny didn't look around, partially because he wasn't sure his eyes were still green and partially because he didn't want to know if his dad was about to attack him.

"All right," Jack grunted; he was clearly still in some pain. "I'll hold it; you go intangible, so I can get it out."

Although he wasn't entirely certain that would work, the ghost boy nodded and did as he was told. He thought the knife had been provided by Vlad like the rest of Angel's weapon, and was surprised to see that it did not go intangible when he did. Jack tossed it to the concrete.

It was an evil looking thing. It was black like everything about Ebony Angel, except for the very edge of the blade, where it was the silver-grey of polished steel. The blade was relatively thin, but it had three sets of barbs pointed toward the hilt. Anyone trying to pull it out would do considerably more damage than it did going in, which explained why Danny couldn't get it out.

"Thanks," he muttered.

"Well," Jack drawled. "You did save my life. I guess I kind of owe you for that. Is that…blood, or ectoplasm?"

Danny's mind went blank as he tried to think of some excuse for the smattering of red that mingled with the green. "Uh…well…there's…you know, there's different colors…of ectoplasm…" It was a weak excuse, but his father seemed to buy it. They sighed in unison, though for different reasons.

"I can't go home with that fiend on the loose," Jack said, almost to himself. "I'd be putting Maddie and the kids in danger."

A rumbling sound put them both on edge, and Danny fought his way to his feet. The world went dim again, but he fought it off. They exchanged glances; neither of them were in any condition for a rematch with Angel. Fortunately, it was the Fenton RV that came careening into view this time.

"Jack!" Maddie exclaimed as she threw herself from the car. "Are you hurt?"

"Oh, gross!" Danny exclaimed as they met each other halfway to greet in the manner of spouses everywhere.

"Yeah, I'm alright," Jack responded quietly. He gestured at Danny. "The ghost kid saved me. For some reason."

The ghost kid in question grinned in what he hoped was a friendly manner as the two ghost hunters regarded him with mixed feelings. Maddie looked at her husband, then back at her son. Finally, she sighed. "Well, I suppose the least we can do is patch you up," she admitted. Jack leaned against the hood of the RV while his wife got the first aid kit out of the glove compartment.

Danny cautiously moved forward at her beckons. He felt like a stray cat that was trying to make up its mind whether or not to trust some humans. They were his parents; he shouldn't have to feel like he couldn't trust them. But they were also ghost hunters, and as far as they knew, he was just a ghost. He held still, ready to go intangible and run at a moment's notice.

Maddie couldn't help a smirk at the ghost boy's obvious fear. It was just ironic for the ghost to be scared of humans when it was normally the other way around. And it was nice to know they were feared among the ghost community. "You know," she began and had to repress a chuckle as Danny flinched. "My son got hurt in this exact spot yesterday."

"Oh, wow, that's fascinating," Danny replied a bit too quickly. His parents, justifiably misreading his response, shared an amused look. He backed quickly away and floated into the air when Maddie was finished. He did not like this feeling at all, and the little voice in his head that said to just tell them was very difficult to resist. But he couldn't tell them. Not now, and not like this. There were more pressing things to worry about. He jumped as someone called his name and turned his attention back to his parents.

Maddie was looking decidedly unhappy; Jack stood like a man with a purpose. He must have managed to convince his wife that it would not be good for him to go home. "Listen up, ghost kid," he said, an unnecessary command as he had Danny's undivided attention. "I don't trust you, and you don't trust me. But since you seem so interested in helping me, I'll accept." This last bit was said as though it caused him great pain to get the words out.

Danny started to respond, but Maddie cut him off. "And if I find that you have hurt Jack in any way, I will rip you apart molecule by molecule!"

The boy raised his hands and floated backwards slightly. "Hey, I'm not interested in hurting anyone," he objected.

After a few seconds, Maddie and Jack said farewell while Danny mimed gagging. Jack retrieved the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick out of the RV, a baseball bat being the only weapon they had even remotely suitable to fighting humans. Maddie slid into the driver's seat, gave her husband a last parting smooch before closing the door, and drove away at a considerably slower pace than she had arrived.

The two guys waited until she was out of sight before they acknowledged each other's existence again. "Okay," Danny announced. "I'll just get you somewhere safe and then go after this Ebony Angel character."

"Oh, no," Jack argued. "This is personal! She attacked Maddie, and she attacked me! You just stay where I can see you and watch my back."

He stalked off for the ramp. Behind him, a very confused ghost boy tried to figure out how that would even be possible as he followed.

* * *

A/N: Dang, that was a tough one to choreograph. I'm not too good at writing action. I think I did pretty well, though. Thanks, Kismet! I feel a little better now. Faded, a Mary Sue is basically a character the author has created to insert herself into the story. They're often way more powerful than the hero, and instantly loved by the good guys and feared by the bad guys. Also often, the hero suddenly can't function unless Mary Sue is around. He seems to suffer from a laspe in intellect and is seldom in anything remotely resembling character, the better for the author to twist his responses to her own desires. By the way, did you get my email?


	5. Chapter Four

All towns have a seedy side, even Amity Park. It's the part of town you don't want to be in after dark, where law enforcement is lacking and law breaking is the norm. Such areas are often home to several abandoned warehouses. It was one such place from which the hum of machinery emanated, sounding very out of place.

Angel carefully set her tools aside and began the painstaking process of repainting Sweetheart's fuel tank. It wasn't the first time her precious bike had been scratched, nor would it be the last. But every time, she repaired it with meticulous care.

"There you go, baby," she said as she finished at last. "Good as new. Well, once the paint dries, at least."

She turned to her helmet and shook her head. That boy had shattered the visor, and her anonymity along with it. She gazed at her faint image in its shiny black surface. Black eyes, black hair, black skin…How long had it been since the last time she had seen her face? How long had it been since anyone had called her November instead of Angel?

She ground her teeth in frustration at the ghost boy's gall. Now, she was thinking again, thinking of who she used to be. He would pay for that. He would pay dearly…

* * *

It was starting to grow dark. Night warred with the last remnants of the sunset to create a shadowy world where evil could lurk around every corner. Danny glanced around and turned to float backwards for a while as he scanned the area behind them. "I'm just saying," he said, not for the first time. "Maybe it's not such a good idea to walk around openly like this." 

"You want to run, be my guest," Jack responded without even looking around. He held the ordinary bat with the word Fenton on it in a determined grip. He may not have been the smartest man in the world, and maybe that was the cause of this foolhardy vendetta. But whatever it was, he was certainly not going to take this assassination attempt lying down.

Danny huffed and gave up. It was no use talking to Jack Fenton when he had that look in his eyes. "You know what? Never mind. Forget I said anything. Hey, I'm just a ghost; what do I know?" He grumbled in that vein for some time.

Jack didn't respond in any way, but inwardly, the rusty cogs of his mind were beginning to turn. The ghost kid reminded him so much of his own Danny; it was eerie. They even looked kind of alike. Someone said once that everyone has their double; that didn't make it any less creepy. They'd even been hurt in the same place, almost as thought they were the same person…

No, that was impossible! Danny was undoubtedly alive, and Phantom was undoubtedly a ghost. No one alive could also be a ghost. Besides, he had seen them both in the same place once. It was nothing more than the world's weirdest set of coincidences ever. He returned his attention to the monologue at hand.

"I mean, it's not like anyone ever appreciates anything I do," Danny was still going on.

"Phantom," Jack interrupted. "You complain too much."

After a moment's silence, Jack sneaked a looked at his temporary ally and found it returned. "You know, you'd complain, too, if every time you tried to help someone, they screamed and ran. Or tried to kill you. Or send you to the Ghost Zone. Or capture you in the Fenton Ghost Weasel." The boy ticked each item off on a white-gloved finger, and looked down at his father again.

The ghost hunter, for his part, stopped walking to look back. Everything in his experience had taught him that ghosts were evil and somewhat dimwitted creatures who delighted in terrifying the living and needed to be sent back to where they came from. If this was an act, then Jazz was right; he was more intelligent than most ghosts. This, of course, led him to wonder if he'd been wrong about everything. "So…ghosts aren't evil?" he asked, both tentative and skeptical.

Danny shrugged. "Nah, most of them are. But some of them…eh heh, us, I mean! Some of us just want to be left alone."

Jack crossed his arms and decided not to debate the ghost boy's terminology. It was bad enough Maddie had convinced him to work with the creature without having to find out exactly how many of his theories were wrong. Instead he walked forward, purposefully forcing the ghost boy to go intangible or move. Danny chose the latter and returned to following his dad.

"Look," he said after a protracted break in the conversation. "If you're going to insist on fighting Angel yourself, you're going to have to trust me a little more. I may need to turn you intangible or something, and I don't want you freaking out or anything."

"Yeah, yeah," Jack answered cantankerously. He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "And just so we're clear, you're to stay out of the way."

"Well, I'm not going to do that if you're about to be killed, D-…Jack…"

"What did you try to call me?" Jack demanded, clearly thinking it had almost been an insult, to his son's relief.

"Nothing." He grinned impishly and went intangible to let the bat swing through him. Oh, it was so much fun to be able to torment his dad without getting grounded. The mood became serious again far too quickly.

Up to this point, Jack had been asking people if they had seen a black motorcycle. Most of them had; it was difficult to miss eight cop cars as they sped by in pursuit. Now, however, there were fewer people out, and no one had seen Angel or her entourage go by. Consequently, the two of them were simply walking forward. Danny had offered to fly reconnaissance, but Jack wanted the ghost boy where he could keep an eye on him. Finding Angel had probably been taking longer than it needed to, but that no longer mattered.

She had just found them.

Jack gripped the bat in both hands and set his feet like a baseball player. Danny hovered just above his head and tried to be ready for anything. A block away, Angel sat astride Sweetheart with one foot against the ground. She revved the engine and spared a moment to wonder what the idiot thought he was going to do with a baseball bat against a speeding motorcycle.

"Come on!" Jack baited her. "What are you waiting for?"

She revved the engine again and kicked off the ground as the bike charged forward. Danny shot a blast at the front wheel again, but Angel expected it this time. She swerved expertly and readjusted her course.

Jack shifted his weight slightly; she wasn't heading directly at him. Even he could see that she was daring him to hit her. He smirked, more than happy to oblige. As Angel came into range, he swung. Wood met metal and broke in half.

Angel swerved to face her victims and hefted the black jousting lance she had been hiding. It folded down to be only a foot long and extended to six feet. Impractical for actual jousting, it was nevertheless an effective weapon for a biker to use against foot traffic.

Jack may have been somewhat of an idiot, but he wasn't that stupid. As Angel charged forward, he turned and ran. Danny caught up quickly and lifted his father off the ground just as Angel went by beneath them. "Okay," he said. "Remember that little talk we had about me helping?" Jack grumbled something unintelligible; in the heat of the moment, he had kind of forgotten about the ghost boy.

Behind her helmet, Angel narrowed her eyes. Her mysterious employer had been right about one thing: she was not going to be able to finish off Fenton until she had dealt with Mr. Hero. She idled where she was until they both came back to the ground, then threw her lance at the boy's heart. Unsurprisingly, he became intangible.

"What are you?" she called.

Jack and Danny wore almost identical expressions of incredulity as they looked at each other and back at Angel. "I'm a ghost," he answered dubiously. "Didn't Plasmius tell you anything when he hired you?"

Angel kicked off the ground and circled her victims slowly, like a sheep dog might to keep his wayward herd in line. "I don't believe in ghosts," she confessed. "But you, boy…you're something alright."

"Who the heck is Plasmius?" Jack yelled, feeling woefully out of the loop. "And why do you keep trying to kill me?"

"For two billion dollars," Angel answered. "I was hired to kill you and stop Phantom by any means necessary. And I've never failed a job." With that, she charged forward again, fully expecting the ghost boy to make the two of them intangible. In one swift movement, she swerved the bike and snagged her lance. Now facing them again, she threw her weapon just as the boy went tangible again. He cried out as it struck and knocked him to the ground.

"Enjoy your last moments, Jack Fenton!" Angel yelled.

Danny yanked out the lance. It wasn't a bad wound; it had caught him just above his white belt, which meant it had barely grazed him. It didn't even hurt anymore. He grinned a bit evilly that Angel had fallen for his trick. As the biker charged forward again, Danny fazed through his dad to meet her head on. She wasn't expecting it.

Jack walked cautiously up behind a very concerned ghost boy. He hadn't seen much of what happened since he had cringed and looked away. He was honestly surprised to be standing here now. He was even more surprised that a ghost was actually showing concern for the person who had just tried to kill them. Or whatever it would have done to a ghost. "Is she dead?" he asked quietly.

Sweetheart had flipped over backwards when it smashed into Danny's ectoplasmically charged fists. It had landed on top of Angel, who hadn't really moved since. Danny was saved from having to go into angst at having killed someone when she slowly pulled herself out from under the bike. Visibly relieved, he answered, "No."

A siren signaled the arrival of the local constabulary and two cop cars pulled to a stop. "Well, I guess that's that," Danny said happily. He gave his dad an ironic salute and shot into the sky.

"Hey!" Jack yelled after him. "Hey, you! I'm not through with you yet! Get back here!"

Angel watched in a slight daze as one of the policemen tried to get Jack to calm down and get a statement while two others walked towards her, guns drawn. She put her hands in the air slowly and let them arrest her. She was too hurt to fight back right now. Well, it wasn't the first time she'd ever been arrested, but she hated it every time. She glared daggers at her target through her cracked visor. He thought this was over.

She smirked.

* * *

A/N: Random, nah. You just made me remember that I've been meaning to ask. And Faith, thankies! This all started as a way for me to force myself to write something every day, and consequently, I post something every day. It's tough to do, too, but I love it.

Oh, everyone! I'm writing a crossover. It's really painful for me because I despise them, but Hermes made me do it. Eh...you'll see. What I'm trying to say is, I'll be posting it no matter if anyone is interested in reading it, but would you guys be interested? You wouldn't have to know the source material for its other half because I explain everything, so it would be like reading any of my other stories. Except the rating would probably go up. I dunno yet; so far it's not turning out as dark as I expected it would. Anyway...


	6. Chapter Five

November Whyte sat in a corner of the holding cell the police had thrown her into.

Stripped of her identity…

Robbed of her name…

She hated the police. More than anything. Not enough to go on a mad cop-killing spree, maybe, but still more than anything else. At least these guys had let her keep her pants and T-shirt. Back home, they usually forced her into an orange prison uniform just because they knew how much she hated it. It was cruel and unusual, darn it!

She watched a guard walk by with thinly veiled hate in her eyes and fingered the set of lock picks that she kept sewn into the lining of her shirt. As soon as the far door slammed shut, she darted forward and went to work.

She smirked. Back home, they always kept her in a cell with an electronic lock.

* * *

At long last, it was Saturday morning, and Danny couldn't even go out with his friends because he had been grounding for coming home late. He sat the kitchen table and doodled on his homework while his parents talked about him over his head. Of course, they didn't realize they were talking about him. He tried, and failed, to hide a knowing smile as they discussed his alter ego's motives. They were decidedly perplexed.

Jack Fenton had spent most of night at the police station filing reports and telling his story to about sixty different people. He almost was arrested himself for trying to take matters into his own hands, but they decided to be lenient due to his role in rescuing the town from the occasional ghost infestation.

Upon finally returning home some time around four in the morning and waking up everyone in the house, he had gone on a very long, very loud rant about having been left alone with the police while the ghost kid just skipped away without a care in the world. It was now sometime after nine, and no one had slept since he got home. Jazz had finally become fed up and gone to the library. Danny was still stuck at home listening to his parents' theories.

"I tell you, Maddie," Jack muttered as he stopped pacing to fall into a chair. "That ghost kid is so much like Danny, it's scary." Danny froze and kept his eyes firmly glued to the paper in front of him. He could almost feel their eyes on him.

"You noticed that, too, huh?" Maddie replied vaguely.

Danny couldn't resist any longer. He tilted his eyes upwards slightly, and met his father's gaze.

When any living creature is scared into a state of panic, they will reflexively fight or run away. This common phenomenon, called the "fight or flight reflex," is built into the self-preservation instincts to enable one's continued survival. When said creature is able to terminate another's existence with little thought and less effort, it will often choose to fight without even realizing it. The ghost boy forced his eyes back down until he could get their color under control again.

"Danny?" his mother said sweetly. "Is there something you want to tell us?"

"Um…"

The TV flicked on suddenly and flipped through several stations before shutting itself off as whatever force abandoned it in favor of the toaster. Jack and Maddie jumped to their feet with a shout to grab their ghost hunting gear, which promptly began malfunctioning. Danny Phantom suddenly materialized to laugh at them before dashing off to fly upstairs. The two ghost hunters charged after him, leaving the real Danny to wonder what the heck just happened and why wasn't his ghost sense going off?

Oh.

He dropped his head into his hands as his not-really-a-ghost friend Kat Technus appeared sitting on the table in front of him. She leaned forward slightly. "You know you owe me now, right?"

"Why are you here, and how did you do that?"

Kat gave him a superior look and leaned back slightly. "Two, wouldn't you like know? And one, to warn you that Ebony Angel character escaped."

Danny's eyes flashed an angry green. "What?" The TV flicked on by itself again and switched to a local news station.

"…just vanished like that," Jack was grumbling as he led the way back downstairs. "That's exactly what he did to me yesterday!" Danny quickly hit the power button to turn the TV off again and grabbed his homework.

"Hey, mom?" he asked. "I need to go to the library and do some research. Is that okay?"

Maddie gave him a skeptical look. "This is something you can't do on the internet?"

"I…need…Jazz to help me."

His parents exchanged glances. Jack shrugged as though to say, "You're the one who grounded him." Maddie sighed and fixed her son with a stern glare. "If I find that you were hanging out with Sam and Tucker-"

"I know, I know," Danny said quickly. "I'll be grounded until I'm thirty." He shifted his weight from foot to foot while his mother regarded him suspiciously. At least this time, the suspicion was about his motives and not his ghostly counterpart. As soon as she told him to go, he practically flew out the door, dashed around the corner to summon said counterpart, and took off for the library.

He found Jazz thankfully alone in a far corner of the research section and materialized, eliciting a barely repressed squeal. "Danny!" she quietly exclaimed through her teeth.

"Angel escaped," he whispered. Jazz stammered to a stop in whatever lecture she was about give and looked at him blankly. He shoved his books into her hands and went on. "I told mom I'd be here. Can you cover for me?"

Jazz stared blankly for a second longer before shaking herself out of it. She nodded grimly. "Come back after you've dealt with her. I won't leave until you get here." Danny nodded tersely and started to fly away. He turned back as his sister reached out to grab his wrist. "Danny…stay safe."

The ghost boy grinned egotistically. "Oh, come on, Jazz. What can she possibly do to me?" He fazed through her hand and took off before she could remind him about the plasma gun and the rapidly healing gash in his arm. The knife wound had more or less vanished when he returned to his human form, and the scratches left by the banshee had stopped hurting as much. He thought he was perfectly capable of dealing with Ebony Angel now that he didn't have to baby-sit his dad. After all, that plasma gun was the only ghost-hunting weapon she had.

Now, if he could just find her...

* * *

Ebony Angel stood with one foot on a black-lacquered tailpipe, her arm straight up the air. She'd been firing energy bursts from her plasma gun for the past thirty minutes, and it was finally paying off. She lowered her arm as the black and white form of her current target came into view.

"Humans are like sheep," she called when Danny came within hearing distance. "Run them one way, and then run them the other. Eventually, they run down. Then you bring into the pen like good little lambs. But not you. You're like me."

"I'm nothing like you!" Danny objected.

Angel laughed and pulled off her helmet. "You're more like me than you know. Come down here. Show me your face. Show me who's behind the Phantom."

Danny hesitated a moment. He did not trust this woman at all, but he felt that something important was going on, something he was too young to understand. He landed and dismissed his ghost form. Angel seemed surprised.

She shook her head. "You really are just a boy…"

The boy inspected the face of hitherto anonymous enemy. Her skin was almost the color of attire, her hair a slightly lighter shade. Her eyes were so brown they were practically black. Suddenly, her chosen moniker made sense on a completely new level.

"I used to be like you, Mr. Hero," Angel continued. She seemed nervous to be seen without her helmet.

"What changed?" Danny asked. He pointedly stared in an effort to augment his advantage.

"I did," she answered with an uncaring shrug. "Do you know what it's like to try to do good deeds when no one cares? It can really jade a lady after a while. So one day, out of spite, I decided to prove them right. I killed my first man that day, and turned my back on this." She gestured at her face. "Back then, I tried to be a hero. Now, my only goal is bringing down El Diablo Roho by any means necessary."

"Who's that?" Danny asked vaguely. His mind was on what she had said. He felt that way sometimes, that no matter what he did, no one would care. After all the people he had saved, all the ghosts he had defeated, even his parents wouldn't believe he was anything other than evil. Maybe he did have something in common with Angel.

She replaced her helmet and waved her arm nonchalantly. "It doesn't matter to you. You'll never have to meet him. Listen, kid. I don't want to kill you anymore. You remind of myself. Just walk away from this."

Danny went back into ghost mode. He set his jaw and shook his head. "Maybe we are a little alike," he admitted. "But I'll never become like you. And I won't walk away, either. That's my dad you're trying to kill." He fancied Angel was shocked by that revelation; she was certainly silent for long enough. Eventually, however, she mounted Sweetheart.

"Sorry you won't live to see your next birthday, kid," she said, sounding honestly apologetic.

Danny floated into the air and charged both hands with ecto energy. "I might surprise you."


	7. Chapter Six

Sweetheart roared to life at her mistress' command and lunged forward through an intangible ghost boy. Danny whirled around and fired an ectoplasmic energy blast at the bike's back wheel. "So is the money really worth it?" he demanded.

Angel circled her prey as she started firing her plasma gun. "This isn't about greed!" she informed him. "I wouldn't expect a child to understand."

"I'm not a child!" Danny protested. He dodged one last blast and rushed forward to knock Angel from her bike. She grabbed him as she fell, and the two of them went rolling.

Danny fought his way free, having momentarily forgotten he could have gone intangible, and swung a fist that connected with Angel's raised forearm. She knocked his arm away and jabbed at his face, but he became intangible.

"Not fair," Angel panted. "Stay so I can hit you!"

"Not on your life!"

Angel grinned behind her helmet and swung again. This time, when the boy went intangible, she jumped through him and somersaulted across the ground to jump up, plasma gun in hand.

Danny blinked. "I should have seen that coming, huh?" He dove into the ground to dodge the shots, then threw himself back out directly under his opponent. "And you should have seen that!" he exclaimed as she was flung back several feet.

The biker jumped to her feet and started running and blasting at the same time. Danny dodged as he chased after her. He dove into the ground, intending to perform the same move as before. This time, however, he came back up just in time to be blasted in the chest at pointblank range. He hit the ground hard.

Angel righted her bike and mounted, then rushed forward to run Danny over. He went intangible at the last possible second, then gave chase. Neither of them paid much attention to the gathered news crews.

* * *

It was on all the news channels. Someone was intelligent enough to get a helicopter in the air, and all the stations played the live footage for days. It wasn't quite as big as the first time ghosts took over Amity Park, and it certainly couldn't match the day the whole town was pulled into the Ghost Zone. Still, "Local Ghost Fights for Life of Ghost Hunter" makes quite a human-interest story. Of course, the fact that said ghost was fighting the most infamous vigilante on the west coast didn't hurt, either.

Jack sat on the edge of the couch next to his wife and watched as their sworn enemy chased the would-be assassin all over Amity Park. On every single local channel, someone was either commenting on the battle royale or speculating as to why the ghost boy would be trying to save the very people who kept hunting him down.

"I just don't get it," he huffed, falling back into the cushions. "Who ever heard of a ghost helping people?"

Maddie shook her head. She thought she knew earlier; then the ghost boy had decided to torment them and proved that he and Danny were two different people. She was grateful for that, actually. Since humans couldn't have ghost powers, it would have meant that their son had died, which tore her apart to think about. "Who knows why ghosts do the things they do?" she sighed at last. "We should take the Specter Speeder into the Ghost Zone later and do some research."

Suddenly in brighter spirits, Jack started blathering about what they should take and when they should go. Maddie chuckled fondly; her husband was like a kid in a toy store at times.

* * *

A black motorcycle thundered down a blessedly empty stretch of road in the middle of town. The police had sent up roadblocks at various points after the third time someone was nearly run over, so Danny and Angel had plenty of room to duke it out without innocent people getting hurt.

Danny dodged an energy blast and returned with one of his own. His opponent slid easily out of the way, then made a sharp u-turn and drove beneath him, gun blazing. He couldn't beat her while she was on the bike; as fast as she was going, he might kill her. He'd already had one scare on the subject, and that was one too many.

They were nearing the police roadblock, which meant Angel would be turning again. Although she was barely cruising by Sweetheart's standards, Danny was flying at his top speed. He gritted his teeth and willed himself to go faster. The bike had to slow somewhat in order to turn; if he could just catch up…

Sweetheart slowed; white gloves met imitation leather. Danny made both of them intangible as they hit the pavement, then dropped Angel. There was a sound of metal hitting brick as the bike crashed into a building.

"No!" Angel yelled. Completely forgetting about Danny, the police, the news cameras, and the dozens of spectators, she ripped off her helmet and dashed toward the totaled bike. "Sweetheart!" she cried, devastated.

The astonished ghost boy floated forward slowly as his enemy who, prior to this, seemed to care for nothing, threw herself onto the wreckage, and sobbed. "I can fix this," she was whispering. "Just wait and see. You'll be good as new, baby…" So nonplussed was the boy that he didn't even realized she had turned on him until he was knocked halfway across the street by an energy blast. "I will kill you!" she raged.

Danny launched into the air to avoid another blast, then dove into ground just under a third. Even Valerie never reacted that violently when he broke one of her toys; there was something else going on here. There had to be. He went invisible and rose up behind her. She was turning in slow circles to look for him, but without her helmet, she could no longer see him.

Her face was equal parts mindless frenzy and hopeless despair. She was…pathetic. The boy shook his head and wondered what could drive a person to this. He almost felt sorry for her, until he remembered what she had tried to do to his dad. Maybe it was a cheap shot, but Danny rather thought she deserved it.

He reappeared on the ground next to her prone form and rubbed his knuckles. Unconscious like that, her name seemed very fitting. The police swarmed around and more or less ignored him. He sighed and started to fly away.

"Hey, ghost kid!" The boy stopped and looked around to see the chief of police hailing him. "That's good work," he said, and went back to his job. Danny smiled.

* * *

The hot topic all over school on Monday was Danny Phantom's triumph over Ebony Angel. It was times like that he wished he could just tell everyone who he was. It would mean instant popularity for him. He joined his two best friends at their usual table at lunch and picked at his food. It seemed to be trying to evolve into a sentient life form.

"Dude, you're all over the news," Tucker exclaimed quietly. "Even CNN and MSNBC are running the story."

Danny shrugged. "It wasn't that big of a deal."

Sam scoffed. "Do you even know who Ebony Angel is?"

"Do you?"

There was a pause. "Okay, so we looked it up yesterday."

"Every gang and crime organization in Los Angeles has a bounty on her head," Tucker interrupted. "It's been about eight years, and no one has managed to collect." The two took turns gushing about how rare it was for Angel to be defeated.

Danny shook his head. "It was nothing. Really." He sighed at the looks of pure skepticism. "I think she was just misunderstood."

"Misunderstood?" Sam asked incredulously. "Danny, we're misunderstood. Ebony Angel is just evil."

He decided not to argue, but inwardly he was thinking about a website he had found Saturday night. It was a single page with a black background and dark grey text. A picture of a man in a lab coat standing next to a motorcycle that looked suspiciously like Sweetheart graced the center of the page. Below it were the words, "Dedicated to the memory of Frank Richards. He will pay in blood for you."

Angel had said it wasn't about greed, and he knew now what she meant. Revenge was her driving force. She was right about one thing, at least: he didn't understand.

* * *

A/N: Sorry, she's just my favorite character of all the ones I've created. Let me explain. Frank is a scientist who worked on development of top secret vehicles. Hedidn't buildSweetheart, but he is the one who customized her. He and Angel had a kind of father/daughter relationship, and when Roho killed him, she snapped.


	8. Epilogue

Danny stared at his darkened ceiling in thought. Ebony Angel had been a hero once, before Frank Richards died. She had helped people without asking anything in return. It was amazing how easily a person could change. He renewed his vow to never turn evil and sighed.

Elsewhere in the house, a door closed with a resounding bang. Danny counted slowly to twenty, then floated into the air and flew through the wall. Angel was to be sent back to California the next day; this was his last chance to talk to her. If he didn't take it, he felt that he would probably regret it.

He went invisible as he entered the prison and scanned the cells. He finally found her in Administrative Segregation, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor. To her credit, she didn't even flinch as he materialized before her. "I was wondering if you were going to show," she said quietly.

"Angel," Danny almost pleaded. "You don't have to be evil. I know that guy you were talking about killed someone who was close to you, but that doesn't mean you just give up on everyone."

She tilted her head. "Wow," she said, completely deadpan. "I never thought of it like that." She stood and folded her arms. "Don't you even try to preach to me, kid. I failed this job, so your dad's been cut loose from my snare. But you better watch your back from now on. No one, but _no one_, wrecks my Sweetheart. As soon as I bust out of here, I'm coming back for you."

Danny jerked backwards as though her anger was a physical force, then, without so much as a goodbye, went invisible again and flew through the ceiling. He honestly thought he could save her. He honestly thought she was just misguided, but she was exactly who she wanted to be. Maybe she was right, and he was just too young, but he did not understand at all.

* * *

Wisconsin. Home of cheese and the Green Bay Packers. Home, as well, to one Vlad Masters, who paced the floor before his fireplace in a fury that matched the flames. Ebony Angel was supposed to be the best. She should have had no trouble dealing with Jack Fenton, even with Danny's interference. And yet, Jack was still whole and hale.

All evidence suggested that, if anything, he had underestimated Angel's abilities, yet she was beaten by a fourteen-year-old boy. Was it possible he had underestimated Danny? Should he have given Angel more weapons?

No, that wouldn't have helped. She didn't use half of what he supplied to begin with. Actually, considering all she had to fight with was a plasma gun and a visor with ghost vision, she held her own really well. Maybe next time, she would be more inclined to utilize the plasma rifle and ectogrenade launcher he supplied.

Maybe she hadn't taken care of Jack, but she now had a vendetta against Danny. Of course, Vlad would continue to supply her. And who knew? Maybe one of these days, she would earn the other half of her payment, after all.

* * *

A/N: You guys forgot the epilogue, didn't you? I always write epilogues. Okay, I'm going to try to continue to update every day, but I've got an Okage: Shadow King epic that I need to finish, so don't be surprised if it turns into every other day for a while.


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